Top brass rebuked over spy blackout

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Two military intelligence officers have been disciplined for
misleading a top-level inquiry into a deliberate shutdown of an
intelligence link to Australian troops in the field.

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Ian Carnell,
found yesterday that three officials in the Defence Intelligence
Organisation gave false evidence that the shutdown of intelligence
during militia massacres in East Timor in late 1999 was not
deliberate.

Based on the declarations, the Prime Minister, John Howard, and
the head of the armed forces misled the public last year when they
insisted the shutdown was not premeditated.

The heavily censored report has revealed deep and continuing
divisions within the top military intelligence agency and
conflicting accounts about who was responsible for the 26-hour
shutdown.

At one point, Mr Carnell asked which account of events was to be
believed, referring to competing views about who was responsible
for the shutdown, one from the organisation's director, Frank
Lewincamp, and another from an officer known only as "Mr A".

Mr Lewincamp was exonerated, but Mr A was found guilty and
suffered a "significant monetary penalty", a senior Defence
Department source said. Another officer was "significantly
professionally counselled", while a third got off with a
warning.

The report backs the intelligence whistleblower Lieutenant
Colonel Lance Collins, who has repeatedly stated he was deprived of
crucial intelligence when he was in East Timor monitoring the
tumultuous independence vote. During the vote, Indonesian-backed
militias ran amok, killing hundreds of civilians.

Although found not guilty, there was evidence against Mr
Lewincamp. Mr A said the intelligence organisation chief gave him
the order to shut down the link in a private meeting, and an
internal email the day after the shutdown said Mr Lewincamp had
been consulted about it beforehand.

Mr Carnell said he was convinced Mr Lewincamp was telling the
truth, based on a statutory declaration and email from Mr Lewincamp
denying involvement, Mr Lewincamp's diaries and testimony from
unnamed officers.

Mr A told Mr Carnell that his statement was changed without his
knowledge to back the line that a technical fault had been
responsible. Mr Carnell rejected this, and said Mr A and two others
had misled the inquiry.

While Mr Carnell said there had been no "cover-up", the director
of the Australia Defence Association, Neil James, said there had
been and expressed his disappointment with the report.

"We are quite disappointed that few details have come out," he
said. "We don't know why it was turned off. We are also
disappointed that the disciplinary action isn't commensurate with
the gravity of the offences."

Mr James was also puzzled by Mr Lewincamp's exoneration,
especially because it was he who turned the link "back on again
after a delay, apparently without inquiring or knowing why it was
turned off in the first place".

The Defence Department source who read the uncensored report
said there were concerns that information from the "Australian eyes
only" database had been passed on to foreigners. This, he said, was
done by Colonel Collins, who was "reporting beyond his ambit".

Colonel Collins, who would not comment on the report, was
hounded out of the Defence Department after he alleged there was a
Jakarta lobby in Australian intelligence and that the link had been
deliberately shut down.

After five years and four inquiries, the truth is still elusive
in this report.